'Oh!' She shimmied up to her knees.
'Don't you dare speak to me like that, Jamie Slater' -- 'I don't think
I'm just going to speak!' he warned her, his lashes falling over his
eyes so that they were narrow and dangerous.
'I think I'm going to act' -- She was on her feet instantly, running for
the flap in the tent with a speed and agility as fleet as a doe's. But
at the flap she paused, realizing that she would be running into a group
of raucous Apaches.
She spun around, certain Jamie was almost upon her. But he was standing
back, watching her with supreme arrogance and amusement. He had known
she wouldn't run out of the tent.
She decided to take her chances with the Apache. She didn't make it.
Jamie had been still, but he came to motion in a flash. Just as she
reached for the rawhide flap, his arms swept around her calves, and she
came crashing down to the hard ground. She coughed and gagged and
struggled against his weight to turn around and face him. He straddled
her. Her sir~ple doeskin dress was wound high around her hips, and she
was naked beneath it. Jamie didn't seem to notice. He sat calmly upon
her, crossing his arms over his chest, aware that she wouldn't be going
anywhere at all.
He stared down at her.
'Undisciplined--brat!'
'Brat! I'm twenty-four years old' -- 'An old maid! Maybe that's half the
problem.'
She gasped, stunned by the remark, and started to struggle furiously
beneath him. Her fingers wound into fists but he was ready, leaning
forward to pin her wrists to the sides of her head.
'I told you--it's done my way. You may be Miss. Stuart, and you may be
the publisher of the Wiltshire Sun, and you may own one of the finest
ranches this side o the Mississippi, but you're with me now, and I
warned you, it's going to be done my way! Especially among the Apache!
You don't make a fool of a man in front of them!'
' But I just wanted to know what was going on!'
'I really should take a switch to you--but at some later date.' The fury
suddenly faded from his voice. He released her wrists, his hands
massaging both tenderly and tempestuously through the splay of her hair.
'Tess, Tess, what are we doing? We're going back to Wiltshire, and all
hell will break loose when we get there. Let's not fight each other
now.' ' She stared at his striking features, at the handsome and rugged
angles and planes of his face, at the passion in his silver eyes. She
trembled suddenly and wound her arms around him.
'Hold me!' she whispered.
And he did.
They shed their clothing, and she thought that he made love to her more
tenderly, more carefully, that night than he ever had before.
When the sun rose their naked bodies were entwined together in the soft
shadows. She didn't want to leave, she thought. She could live among the
Apache with Jamie forever.
But of course she couldn't. This was not her world, and she had vowed
that she would fight von Heusen. Neither she nor Jamie could walk away
